Flavor Boulevard

Partly because of my busy schedule, partly because of the lack of good Vietnamese food in Berkeley, I haven’t had Vietnamese food for months. I miss it, of course. Luckily, the neighboring cuisines share so much similarities that my “comfort food” category has steadily expanded to enclose most of East Asia. If for some reason America and I don’t get along, I think I can happily merge into Taiwan and Japan (not sure about Korea – their food is too spicy…).

So when I crave comfort food, if it’s Sunday or Monday and Musashi is closed, I go down University Avenue to the Taiwan Restaurant. It’s the purple building next to Anh Hong, and it’s another case of generic-names-hence-don’t-go-there type of restaurant. However, two Taiwanese told me that it was “good enough” – the owner of Asha Tea House across the street, and Kristen. As with any Asian eating establishment, you have to know what to get at the Taiwan Restaurant, otherwise you end up with oily overload. I haven’t strayed once out of the usuals. It’s comfort food, there’s no need to change it. In fact, I come here just for one type of soup: the pickled cabbage soup with tripe.

Currently, this is my favorite soup in the whole Bay Area (not counting noodle soups, of course!). Nowhere else serves it. (The second time I ordered it, the waiter skeptically asked me if I knew what it was.) The pickled cabbage (Chinese pickled cabbage, similar to Vietnamese dưa muối) makes the broth sour and clear, the pork tripe is chewy and smooth. I would drink it to the last drop, and it delights even a grumpy stomach.

I’ve never seen such a spoon before.

Much to Mom’s chargrin, I pay no heed to the cleanliness behind the scene when I order at restaurants. Pig ears are crunchy and not so fatty – good enough for me (^_^).

Kristen introduced me to this dish – fried pork cutlet on rice with sweet pickled greens. It’s actually pretty oily, but the rice is soaked with the sweet and savory pork sauce… I intended to save half for the next day but in the end I cleaned up the bowl.

The last time I went, I paid a little more attention to the decoration (because the server forgot to bring me my pork, and I was just sitting there nibbling on the pig ears pretending to be cool). It looks rather classically Chinese – red lanterns and red table-clothed tables, all faded into a shade of cerise – hinting at some forgotten intention of being on the higher end. At the very least, it was set up to be a restaurant, not a simple food shack. Yet the food is cheap (these 3 dishes plus tip cost a meager $20.66), the atmosphere is utterly casual, and customers like me don’t ever think of its food as more than comfort food. The Taiwan Restaurant is, as its website claims, “the first restaurant in this country to serve Taiwan’s version of China’s epicurean delights”. I felt somewhat sad thinking that it has lost the glory that it might have once had.

The most pleasant surprise that prompted me to write about it was actually its tea. You know how all Chinese restaurants serve some kind of watered down “tea”, usually jasmine-flavored? The Taiwan restaurant actually serves Baochong. Watered down, but it’s still a legitimate Taiwanese oolong. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before, but now that I have, I have enough reasons to recommend this restaurant to everyone. It is indeed “good enough”.

Address: Taiwan Restaurant
2071 University Avenue,
Berkeley, California
(510) 845-1456

In summer 2011, I ate at China Village once per a friend’s recommendation and was not super impressed (like I ever). Then it burned down in early 2012 (so did Intermezzo and a few other restaurants on Telegraph which I also visited in summer 2011…) and I hardly missed it. A few days ago, Cheryl and Eric called me up, “We’re going to that restaurant on Solano I told you about, wanna come?” I thought Cheryl told me about some dimsum place in Albany… “Sure!” Turns out it was China Village. (Now I wonder if she ever mentioned a dimsum place at all…)

Although China Village does have dimsum, it’s not a place to order dimsum. It is known for Szechuan food – spicy, oily, rich and usually a combination of all three. The menu has a gazillion items, and your experience definitely depends on what you order. Not everything is a wow (as clearly indicated by my first visit, and by names such as “classic sweet and sour pork with pineapple”[*]). Ask the waiter for recommendation.

Usually, I ask the waiters just for kicks, because 9 times out of 10 their recommendations turn out disappointing (most memorable examples: here and here). But China Village does surprise me with its service – the restaurant is fully operated by family members, the waiters remember Cheryl and Eric from their previous visits, and the chef[**] personally came out to tell us to switch order because what we wanted would be too spicy. That’s sweet. 🙂

Item #206 – 川式牛腩面 Szechuan beef stew noodle soup ($8.95). The beef is similar to the beef in niu ro mien but the broth is spicy.

Item #71 – 东坡烧鸭 Dong Bo braised duck ($16.95). Not spicy, super tender. This is what we switched into per Chef John Yao’s warning. (At the beginning, we asked for a mild #69 – 砂锅啤酒鸭 clay pot duck with beer-infused sauce – but Chef Yao said it can’t be made mild.)

Item #175 – Sauteed bitter melon with eggs ($9.95). Definitely not “restaurant-worthy item” in Asia but it’s hard to find bitter melon here (except in Vietnamese and Chinese markets) and we love bitter melons too much to pass.

Item #72 – 家常肘子 Five spice hot and spicy pork shoulder ($18.95). This one can be made not spicy. And LOOK AT THAT SIZE!!!!! The three of us could barely make a dent! SUPER tender, SUPER flavorful. I can eat it for days (and I do, with the leftovers…)

With the bill, the restaurant also gave each of us a small bowl/cup of sweet red bean soup with tapioca pearls (not the tapioca in bubble teas. These are “bot bang” in Vietnamese, but what are they called in Chinese?). It was so simple and so soothing.

This time, I can see why my friends keep going back here.

Address: China Village
1335 Solano Avenue,
Albany, CA 94706
chinavillagealbany.com

Footnote:
[*] In Vietnam (and I suspect throughout Asia), not every eating establishment can be called a “restaurant”, and not every dish is worthy of being served as a restaurant item. Sweet and sour pork can be good, but it’s nowhere complex and luxurious enough to be in the same menu with, say, “five spice pork shoulder”. The chefs know that, the Chinese customers know that, and sweet and sour pork is just there for the people who don’t stray from what they have at Panda Express. So, if you go to a Chinese restaurant worthy of being called a restaurant, don’t order sweet and sour pork.

[**] The chef is quite established. I like that the “five spice” sauce for the pork shoulder actually has over 8 ingredients.

These pictures needed no editing at all, the shine and glory of the meat are their actual shine and glory. And I still can’t get over how tender that pork shoulder was. (T_T)

Mom posed a question and I can’t conjure up any adequate answer for her: why does Korean fried chicken only appear in holes in the wall?

Not just a simple hole-in-the-wall thing in a busy strip mall, it has to either stand alone in an empty lot or sit at a shady street corner with iron folding doors and a few rowdy-looking guys smoking outside. Granted that those guys look Korean and the signs are in Korean, which confirms the authenticity of the place, and these are Korean drinking establishments after all. But does it have to be so shady? I want to walk down the street and eat fried chicken late at night sometimes…

The fried chicken bits with green onions at Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지, which should be pronounced |Kang Tong Twe Jee|) might be good enough to risk it though. Frankly there’s less chicken on that plate than fried batter and green onion, but since when did fried chicken become so refreshing? A squeeze of lemon makes all the difference.

Thanks to Kristen’s mom, we three shared 8 dishes that covered tofu, seafood, chicken, pork and beef, one of them was a portion for two; the guy’s look of concern was funny, he even asked if we were sure. (We had plenty of leftovers of course. Nothing beats eating with moms. ;-)) Although “twe jee” (돼지) means pig or pork, this shack has good but not the best pork dishes. Kwen chan thah, their haemul soondubu (해물 순두부, soft tofu soup with seafood) and haemul pajeon (해물 파전, seafood onion pancake) are top of the game.

The wallpaper and the table arrangement are just too cute.

Address: Kang Tong Degi (강통 돼지)
3702 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 658-2998

Soft tofu soup with shrimp, squid and clam. It looks fierce but tastes just slightly spiky. It was a good warm-up.

Banchan (side dishes). The only place I’ve seen that serves little crunchy shrimps. Yum yum.

Kimchi fried rice. In a moment of joy I dropped my camera head first onto the sunny-side-up, breaking the yolk and clouding my lens. Hence the dreamy look.

Thank you, Kristen Sun, my dear friend who has shared many great meals with me in Berkeley and definitely many more in the future, for sharing a post here with us today 🙂

Halfway through our meal, Mai and I turned to each other and we agreed, “I’m not that full yet” and “I can still eat more.” This was after a small plate of charcuterie (which wasn’t that small) and two small plates, which again, were not that small. It solved, however, the main question that had been bugging us since we arrived at the restaurant: which entrees should we get? And if we get more than one entree, could we still do dessert? Turns out indecision works very well at this restaurant; sampling the diverse offerings of the menu is definitely the way to go! Eating with Mai is always a treat – for the mind and for the stomach! Thank you Mai for the great honor of being a guest blogger for Flavor Bouvelard!

Simply put, Revival Bar & Kitchen, located right in the middle of Downtown Berkeley, is gorgeous. The tall ceiling, the rustic decor, the feeling of open space, and best of all, a bookshelf tucked away in the corner, give Revival a unique feel. The tables were just the appropriate width apart when it comes to having good conversation with two women who bonded with Mai over their travels to Vietnam, and perhaps a tad bit too close when we overheard a man speaking unkindly about his (absent) girlfriend to another friend. But let’s speak of the food…

When we received our menus, right away our eyes landed on the charcuterie section, which consisted of fresh ham, duck liver mousse, coppa di testa (headcheese), and smoked duck breast ($8 for an individual plate, $18 for a small plate of all charcuterie, and $26 for a large plate of all charcuterie). The fresh ham and the smoked duck, while delicious, were not particularly unique in any way. The coppa di testa… now this is something interesting. It was my first taste of headcheese, so I went in without any expectations. It’s sour and leaves a slight fizzy aftertaste like a soda. It also is very fragile; it is not quite a cold cut but not quite a pate either… it had a very weird “saucy” consistency, which Mai found to be weird as well compared to the headcheese that she is accustomed to! The duck liver mousse was our favorite meat on the plate; the texture is rich and smooth and the taste just strong enough without being overpowering. This plate was definitely fun, as we could combine all the different meats with the sides (raspberry jelly, pickles, and mustard) in as many different combinations as we wished, each bite yielding a new combination of flavors. We both agreed that the real standout on the plate, however, was the raspberry marmalade. In fact, as we would soon discover, the one thing that Revival really excels
at are its fruit jellies.

Next on our list are the two small plates: tempura fried squash blossoms ($13) and bone marrow ($11). The tempura fried squash blossoms, stuffed with ricotta and goat cheese, were delicious and light and the pieces of fried zucchini that garnish the plate were also good. Mai, however, found that the squash blossoms had a stronger goat cheese flavor than she would have liked. The sauce, a cilantro mint coulis, paired well with the fried vegetables, but was forgettable.

For me, the standout dish of the night is the bone marrow. Rich and fatty, this first taste of bone marrow was just perfect. Best of all, we were allowed to season the meat ourselves, as the dish comes with a side of sea salt. The crunchy baguette, the flavorful meat, the salt, and best of all, the kumquat marmalade worked perfectly together. This dish, for me, was one of the perfect bites of the night. And once again, we were blown away by the fruit – the kumquat marmalade, which really is a standout on its own, tied the flavors of the dish together perfectly.

Despite all of this food, it was at this point that Mai and I decided to go for it and ordered both of the larger plates that we were looking at, which our waitress recommended as the two best as well. The risotto cakes ($21), however, were just okay. The cakes themselves were a bit dry and bland. The porcini mushrooms, while not having the typical “musty” mushroom taste as Mai explains, really did not add any unique flavor to the dish. However, I loved the porcini jus and could not stop dipping into the sauce. I love thick almost puree-like textures and this was no exception. Mai and I both agreed that the vegetables that came on the side were delicious and outshone the risotto cakes.

The pork chop ($25) was good and very well-cooked – juicy, full of flavor, and not dry in the slightest. Both Mai and I found the bourbon butter to be a bit too strong and overpowering of the meat; we ended up scraping most of the butter off. The potatoes and artichokes were well-cooked and flavorful, but not particularly unique.

Overall, the smaller plates succeeded more than the larger plates and the size of the small plates comes at a overall better bargain, as there is not much difference in portion sizes.

Of course, our meal cannot end without dessert. And were we ever glad because the desserts here are amazing! We settled on an apricot mousse ($8), but after asking what the ice cream du jour ($7) was, we had to order that as well. The flavor is apricot pit, which we of course, had to try. Our waiter informed us that it has an almond-like taste, which we agreed on; the flavor is much lighter, however. The nuttiness and creaminess of the ice cream, along with the crunchiness of the pecans, were a perfect combination!

The apricot mousse, likewise, was also delicious. While we couldn’t make out the flavor of the green tea cake at the bottom, the light fluffiness of the apricot mixed with the sourness of the blood orange reduction and the crunch of the bruléed bottom was quite pleasing texturally. As for that blood orange reduction…it had a marmalade texture but it was chilled so it was almost like a sorbet. A clear stand-out!

Overall, Revival made for a great dinner and we had lovely neighbors to chat with as well near the end of our meal. The real standouts here – the raspberry jelly, the kumquat marmalade, and the blood orange reduction – were unexpected but elevated what could have been ordinary or boring dishes into something special. When I think of a perfect dining experience, eating at Revival definitely ranks high: great friends, new acquaintances, and delicious food at a relaxed and leisurely pace.

Address: Revival
2102 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 549-9950

Sometimes things just refuse to go the way you plan.

I’ve been looking forward to the fried chicken at this place called Number 1 Chicken Rice & Seafood for half a year. It’s in Houston, so I have two time windows each year, each a couple of weeks long, to plan my voyage. Last winter we hit the place less than an hour after they closed (which was like 8 pm, I think), this June we were even more determined. According to Aaron’s sources, they open on Sunday between 6 and 7 pm. Strange, but okay. We camped out at the museum for over an hour because the museum is relatively near Number 1 Chicken, and we didn’t want to take any chances. At 6 we drove into its parking lot. The OPEN sign wasn’t lit up. Aaron checked the schedule posted on the door: they’re closed on Sunday. Fine. I’m not meant to eat Number 1 Chicken’s fried chicken. Surely there must be other fried chickens somewhere along Alameda. Following Varun’s advanced GPS system that didn’t allow us to type in anything unless the car is stopped (for safety reason, even though the one who punched the buttons wasn’t the driver), we drove to a few more possible-blogging-material spots, one of them no longer exists. And all of them were closed. We weren’t even meant to eat on Alameda?!

Accepting fate, we gave up on Alameda and headed back to the Rice Village, Aaron’s “hunting ground”. Between Picky Varun and Picky Mai, we settled into El Meson. Cuban.

Here we were in this pretty good-looking Latin American place with frescos of flamboyant girls in flamboyant flamenco dresses and a generous bowl of Andes Mint at the front desk, from which we took (quite) a few as we walked in. The guys were wondering if they have free chips and salsa here (you know, like at the usual Tex-Mex resto in your neighborhood strip mall). We were hungry. Well, they do. The chips and salsa came out after we ordered. I was a bit sad that I couldn’t get the paella (minimum order of 2 people, and yet another thing that didn’t go my way that day), so I got two tapas plates.

If you have a sweet tooth like me, and I don’t mean just a liking for dessert but a liking for sweetness in everything from meat to noodle soup(*), El Meson is for you. The plantains are one thing, but the cinnamon pineapple that goes with the crab cakes ($9.95) and the honey-glazed pork belly ($9.95) are sweet enough to be desserts. The crackling skin offered a nice textural contrast, but slices of poached apple didn’t help toning down the sugar.

I liked the plantains in Varun’s Pollo Salteado ($15.95, grilled chicken sauteed with onion and pepper in sherry sauce, served on rice and black beans with a side of grilled plantains), but Varun found them too sweet.

For dessert, we took “some” more Andes Mint. 😉

Address: El Meson
2425 University Blvd.
Houston, TX 77005
(713) 522-9306
Dinner for 3: $65 – For more pictures of our food, see Photon Flavors.

(*) There are many noodle soups with a sweet broth. Not sweet like your banana cream pie but when you taste the first spoon, you’d go “wow this broth is sweet!” Examples are Lao and Cambodian noodle soups (such as hu tiu). One of my favorite ingredients in the Korean mul naengmyun (cold buckwheat noodle soup) is the Asian pear, which is sweet. But it’s nothing new really, all broths need some kind of sweetness, either from bone marrow or from mushroom.

After a 5-course afternoon tea, the three of us felt our stomachs’ calling. The wind blew chilly moisture from the sea. A hearty dinner of noodle in hot broth would hit the spot, one that was saturated with oolong. Quite appropriately, we walked into O Chamé, meaning “eye of tea”(*) literally and “playful little one” colloquially. It’s Mother’s Day, no reservation, we couldn’t be any luckier that the guy found us three seats at the end of the bar.

Of course, who would skip the appetizers. And of course, we couldn’t decide on just one appetizer, so we ordered three. The potato and snow crab croquette ($8.50), buttery but mild, tastes ten times better after a dip in the plumier-than-usual-and-not-too-sour tonkatsu sauce. Usually I don’t dip my stuff, but the sauce is a must here.

The grilled, caramelized eel ($10.50), Kristen’s choice, is great. Little Mom loves eel, and she would love this. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! 🙂 A bite into the crisp endive releases a burst of sharp, almost minty air to balance the eel’s fatty sweetness.

Another fatty, sweet thing is the braised pork ribs with ginger and lemon ($8.50), so sweet I could detect neither ginger nor lemon. The leaner pieces looked soft but not too thrilling. One must go for the pieces with lotsa fat and semi-charred ends, those are gold.

Then came the reason we decided on O Chamé: the noodle soups. The broth is light yet hearty. Actually, I’m still in tea mode so I can only think of the word “full-bodied” to describe it. Tender pork as the base, smooth spinach for texture, and thin strips of takuan (pickled daikon) to freshen it up. Both Tiana and Kristen settled on this pork shoulder udon ($14.50). My normal self would, too.

But I chose the tofu udon instead. Lately I’ve decided that I should gauge a restaurant based on their vegetarian/vegan numbers because it’s hard to make vegan stuff taste good (unless it’s a dessert). This shiitake-spinach-aburage (fried tofu skin) udon (13.50) passes the bar, but it would be nice had it been entirely vegan. The broth is a fish stock flavored by the earthy sweetness of mushroom. I prefer the vegan udon at Anzu, whose broth has the more refreshing note of chrysanthemum greens.

Our face bathed in the steam, our stomach getting packed. It was hot. We were dead full half way through the bowl. I did my best picking up all of my spinach and mushroom, but shamefully left half the broth and a third of the noodle. We thought we couldn’t eat anymore, but then we flipped the page and stared at the desserts, then looked among ourselves and grinned: “I don’t think we’re ever too full for ice cream”. 😀 Just one dessert is not gonna hurt. The agony was when we narrowed our choices to four (from nine): sherry custard, poached pear with berries, truffle torte, and what we ended up getting following the waitress’s suggestion: two scoops of caramel balsamic gelato ($5).

The first spoon was, well, interesting. But it grows on you. It has a bite to it. Kinda feisty, or in Kristen’s words, “like yogurt”, which makes sense because both balsamic vinegar and yogurt are products of fermentation, works of microbes, and sour. Definitely worth squeezing in at the last minute.

Address: O Chamé
1830 4th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 841-8783

Dinner for three + tax: $81.56

(*) At first I pronounced it |oh-shah-mei|, like a French thing, you know. But seeing its meaning, I guess it must be |oh-jah-mei|, like “cha” (tea) in sencha.

If you had to choose, what is the most Vietnamese dish? If you are a Vietnamese expat, what would make your mouth water the most just thinking about? What is the food, the smell, the taste that when you see or hear some stranger is savoring, you’d immediately think, “hey, he must be my fellow countryman”?

One of my friends lives in Freiburg, Germany. There is one Vietnamese restaurant 1 km away from the University, der Reis-Garten, and it is the only Vietnamese restaurant in a 40-km radius (the next one is across the border: Le Bol d’Or in Wintzenheim, France). For over 6 years living away from home, he survived on pasta and tomato sauce, students don’t have time. One day, external circumstances have finally driven him to decide that he no longer needs to suppress his cravings out of consideration towards his Germanic housemates. He bought a bottle of fish sauce. The next day he made thịt kho. That makes it official: he’s Vietnamese, and he hasn’t forgotten it.

“Success?” “Did you add coconut juice?” “Do you have eggs in the pot?” “Do you have chả lụa too?” The questions come showering on Facebook. We cheered him on with the same salivating imagination no matter which region of Vietnam we are from and where we are living: the fatty chunks of pork so tender that a plastic chopstick can cut through, the amber sauce, with which the hard boiled eggs are imbrued from yolk to white. The fatty, sweet, and salty pork must be freshened up with the crunchy, sour, cold dưa giá (pickled beansprout). The pure fish sauce makes an intoxicating savory smell that permeates the whole house, seeps through the window into the courtyard to the next door neighbor, induces a Vietnamese to lick his lips thinking of his mother’s meals and perhaps, a Westerner to cringe. But why should a cringe matter? The pure fish sauce deepens the savoriness of the meat sauce, making it the best thing to pour over a steamy bowl of white rice. My friend said all he need is this amber meat sauce and dưa giá to down a few bowlfuls. Of course, I agree.

The first weekend I got home, Little Mom sat me down in front of thịt kho, dưa giá, rice, and rice paper. All kinds of rice papers come from all over Asia, but those are for calligraphy and painting. Edible rice paper comes from Vietnam and Vietnam only. A pet peeve of mine is getting served those “spring rolls” made with wonton wrappers in American Vietnamese eateries, like a lumpia. A Vietnamese spring roll must be rolled with the translucent, veil-thin, made-of-rice-flour rice paper. Rolling it with any other kind of wrapper is an unpatriotic insult to Vietnamese cuisine. Anyway, my mom sat me down in front of her succulent slow braised pork, pickled beansprout, rice, and rice paper. Then she said go for it, and boy did I go. I made little wraps of pork and sprouts to dip into the sauce. I poured the sauce over rice. I dipped plain rice paper into the sauce. I made some more wraps and filled another rice bowl. It’s almost barbaric. The comfort of an old country taste is multiplied by the comfort of home. The eyes and tongue are no longer the principle critics, but all five senses are involved: the smell of the sauce, the sound of the sprouts collapsing between bites, the delicate touch much needed in rolling the rice paper. Each bite I took embodied the ordinary, simple, honest Southern cooking and the skillfully honed tradition of hundreds of years: thịt kho is a must-have in our Tet feast, like the turkey at Thanksgiving, the songpyeon on Chuseok, or the ozoni for Shogatsu. Well, it’s not Lunar New Year now, but it is a New Year. Maybe I’ve grown old, but I find that nothing beats celebrating the holidays at your family’s dinner table with family comfort food. 🙂

As I’m writing this post, the fireworks are going off right outside the windows, talk about food setting off fireworks ;-). Happy 2012! And may Vietnam be delicious always! 🙂

— Guest post by Mom, translated by me —

Tofu is a familiar face in the Asian kitchens, especially the Far East ones: Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean. In Korean dramas, the Koreans have tofu for every meal and some would give a block of white dobu to people who just get out of detention, perhaps to wish them a good, new start without impurities and no returning to jail? A cute, meaningful tradition I think. Up north Vietnam, đậu phụ used to be the main source of protein, despite having “phụ” (secondary) in its name. After all, the old Mr. Lê in Nhất Linh‘s New Bridge Ville dreamed of only a tofu wedge dipped in shrimp paste to satiate a drink at dinner time. Is it white tofu or golden fried tofu, and is it good eaten like that, I wonder? Down South, soft tofu is marvelously used to make warm tofu pudding in syrup (tàu hủ nước đường), an addictive dessert that I haven’t seen in the States, and unfortunately, was slowly fading away from even the Saigon food scene as it’s harder to make than it looks. Ah, all this tofu talk’s driven me to the stove and so comes my savory tofu entree: stuffed tofu in tomato sauce (đậu phụ nhồi thịt sốt cà).

Ingredients:
– 1 package of yellow fried tofu, pre-cut into 3-cm squares
– 1/4 lb ground pork
– 3 purple onions, or 1/2 sweet onion
– 1/2 tsp chopped garlic
– 1 tsp sugar
– 1/4 tsp salt
– pepper and olive oil
For the tomato sauce:
– 1/2 can diced tomato (I use Hunt’s or Del Monte pre-seasoned with basil, garlic & oregano)
– 3 garlic cloves, half smashed.
– 3 tbs sugar
– 1 tsp salt

Marinade the pork with onion, garlic, pepper, salt & sugar. Gently slit open (from the side) half the tofu squares to stuff the meat in, as you would slice an English muffin.
On medium heat, add enough oil to barely submerge the stuffed tofu pieces. Fry tofu until golden brown on all six sides to make sure the meat is thoroughly cooked. Set aside.
In another skillet, add 1 tbs oil and quickly sauté the smashed garlic cloves until golden as the wonderful smell fills your nose. Add diced tomatoes, salt & sugar to taste. If you like it a bit bland, add 1/2 cup water. Cook on high heat and let the sauce boil for roughly 3 minutes, then pour on top of the fried stuffed tofu.

Scoop a bowl of steamy hot white rice. If it rains, you’ve got yourself a homey happiness.